


Lips of an Angel

by lara_s



Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-13
Updated: 2017-02-13
Packaged: 2018-09-23 22:55:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,337
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9685532
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lara_s/pseuds/lara_s
Summary: If Arissa had stayed on the station longer than she did...  Story is very loosely based on/inspired by the song by Hinder.





	

From across the room, muffled as it was under a pile of discarded clothing and bedsheets, his combadge beeped. Odo groaned. True, he didn’t exactly sleep per se and he had a well developed reputation as a workaholic, but neither of those things necessarily meant that he welcomed being disturbed at all hours. For the briefest of moments, he seriously considered ignoring the summons, hoping it would just go away. Or at least he did until he heard the soft, hesitating, voice on the other end.

“Kira to Odo?” 

He could tell it wasn’t official business immediately. Kira’s normally brash, self assured, commanding tone was noticeably absent. She sounded tired. Lost. Defeated. The sheer unusualness of such caught Odo’s undivided and immediate attention, as much as, if not more than, any news of criminal activity or possible station emergency. 

Sparing a guilty glance at the woman beside him, Odo got up. Arissa, thankfully, was a sound sleeper. It was one of the many things he’d come to learn about her over the course of the last few weeks. Briefly shaking his head over the still new experience of regenerating in a bed at all, let alone having someone there with him, the Constable of Deep Space Nine quickly collected his errant combadge and stepped into the other room. 

“Major,” he finally answered the hail, “what is it? Are you alright?” 

“Odo,” she gasped before breaking off into a gut wrenching wail. Kira’s rapidfire Dahkur Province dialect, interspersed as it was with her sobs, gave the translator a fit and was nearly incomprehensible. About all he could make out was his name repeated over and over again. 

“Hold on, I’ll be right there,” Odo found himself saying. 

Moments later, stumbling home from her weekly late night tongo game, Jadzia Dax was the only one who saw the flash of gold flying down the empty hallway. She smiled indulgently. Odo in his natural state was a rare sight and she made a mental note to ask him about it the next day. 

Arriving outside Kira’s quarters in record time, Odo hesitated only briefly before knocking lightly and letting himself in. Despite the nighttime hour, the lights were on at full strength. Chasing away the shadows, he realized abruptly. He quickly spotted Kira sitting on the couch. At the sound of the door, deep brown eyes swollen with tears and filled with agony looked up at him as he awkwardly stepped inside her private sanctuary. 

“I’m so sorry, Odo.” Kira remained sitting, not bothering to get up, but made a concentrated effort to collect herself nonetheless. “I didn’t mean for… You didn’t have to come check up on me. Thanks, but it’s nothing. Just another nightmare.” She sighed heavily and gave a bitter nasty little chuckle. “Not like that’s anything new. I’ll be fine.” 

Nerys had never mentioned it before, but he wasn’t at all surprised she had nightmares. Odo knew more of Kira’s history than anyone on the station and, even still, he suspected he didn’t know the half of what she had been through as a result of the Occupation. Whatever was troubling her now was bad, that much was clear. 

It was the pure anguish evident on her lovely face that did him in. Just like that, all his vows to keep a distance between them, to stick only to the essentials, evaporated entirely. Faced with watching the woman he couldn’t help but love beyond reason battling down her demons, Odo knew he had to do something. He couldn’t fight this fight for her, even if she’d let him, though Prophets knew he would have if given the opportunity. But he could and would offer whatever slim comfort he might able to provide to ease her burden. 

“Of course you’ll be fine.” Odo scoffed at the very idea of Kira Nerys not being able to handle something. His words brought the ghost of a smile fleeting briefly across her lips. Encouraged, Odo came closer. Kneeling on the floor in front of her he reached for faintly trembling hands. She let him. “But, I think,” he said, interlocking simulated fingers with hers, “that you could use some company right now. If you’d like? I’m already here after all.” 

The way she tightly gripped his hand in response was all the answer he needed.

“It’s Gallitep,” she said flatly, staring down into her lap. “The dreams have never been so vivid, so real, before. I woke up and really thought I was back there for a minute. I panicked.” Self derision dripped from her voice. 

The name alone of that most infamous of work camps was more than sufficient explanation for Kira’s current mental state. Odo knew the atrocities committed there had been monstrous, even by Cardassian standards. 

“Did you know I was caught in the raid when we liberated the place? I was held in an interrogation center for three weeks. Three weeks! I was pretty much unconscious by the time the resistance was able to come back to pull me and the other prisoners out. Those of us who were still alive that is. I was one of the lucky ones. And that wasn’t even the worst of it.” Kira shuddered violently. “Oh, Prophets, the things I saw there…. so many dead bodies.... The casual brutality. The children. Even after all these years… It changed me Odo. I’ve never been the same since. Sometimes I think a part of me died there too.”

The revelation wasn’t anything Odo hadn’t already suspected to some extent, but hearing it out in the open managed to splinter his already aching heart even further. He wiped a single tear from her cheek and gently tilted her chin upwards, forcing her to look at him. This vulnerable deeply haunted woman was just as beautiful, filled him with just as much pride, as the fiercely defiant commander who matched wits with Starfleet Admirals and took down Jem’Hadar by the legion. He wished he could tell her as much, somehow put his love and admiration for her into words that she might accept.

“Nerys,” he managed to choke out instead, “I don’t know what to say.” Empty platitudes didn’t seem appropriate and weren’t his style in any event. “But if you feel the need to talk about it, I will always listen. Always. No matter how difficult it may be to hear. Please remember that.”

She shook her head, dislodging his hand from her chin. “I’d rather forget.”

Odo thought for a moment. “Okay then. Form SR-10B.”

“What?” 

“You know. That damned Starfleet form that’s supposed to be filled out for any arrest made on the station involving bodily injury or loss of property worth more than five bars of latinum. I have no less than forty of them to complete.” 

“Oh. Yeah. Quarterly reports are due in two days, Odo. When were you planning on getting them done?” 

She was sounding every bit the First Officer now. It was only a mild rebuke but Odo managed to look both sheepish and indignant at the same time in return. “It’s been particularly busy in security lately. I had more important things to do. Since it appears unlikely that either one of us is going back to sleep tonight, how about helping me finish them?”

Kira burst out laughing. “Only you, Constible, would think to pull me out of a funk by giving me work to do. But it’s perfect. Straight-forward, uncomplicated and blissfully mind numbing. Let's get started.” She lept from the couch with considerable enthusiasm and, hand still linked with his, pulled him over to the computer terminal. “We can access the security logs from here.” 

They finished two hours before Alpha shift was due to begin. 

“Well, there you go.” Kira tapped a button and sent the completed files to Sisko’s office with a flourish. 

“Thank you for your assistance, Major.”

“No, thank you Odo. For everything.” Kira stood up and spontaneously wrapped her arms around him in a tight hug. “You turned what would have otherwise been a very long night with a bottle of seev-ale into an actually enjoyable evening. Thanks for being there for me.”

Gingerly Odo returned the embrace. Perversely, as he held the woman of his dreams, Odo thought of Arissa. She too was a soul shaped and hardened by tragedy. He supposed that was what had attracted him to the Idanian in the first place, a faint echo of the Major in kind eyes that looked at him with unmistakable desire. How he longed for Kira to look at him that way. 

Without fail, it was Nerys who Odo envisioned underneath him whenever he took his pleasure in Arissa’s body. Nerys he tasted on his lips. Nerys he worshiped and made weak with pleasure. With her slim frame actually in his arms, chaste though the hug was, he could almost imagine what it would be like… And yet, Odo had suppressed such feelings about the Major for years, the bittersweet longing his constant companion. He had no intention of letting it all out now. 

Indeed, these days he had all the more reason not to confess. He cared for Arissa, even thought he might, some day, come to love her. He didn’t want to cause her any pain. Nothing untoward had happened over the course of his night with Nerys and nothing of the sort, he was sure, ever would. It wasn’t even the first time the two of them had stayed up companionably working until morning. Odo, however, had broken up enough domestic disputes on the station to know that, as a general rule, humanoids didn’t look too kindly on time spent in someone else’s quarters, no matter how innocent, when one was ‘in a relationship’. He shouldn’t be here, he knew that. Kira too belonged to another, she wasn’t meant for him. He shouldn’t be here, but Odo wouldn’t have been anywhere else. 

He frowned, thinking of something. “Tell me Nerys, why did you call me? Shouldn’t you have called Shakaar?” 

“Didn’t want him. Wanted you,” Kira mumbled.

If only. If only such words were said in a different context. If she meant them the way he wished she did.

When it became clear he wanted more of an answer, she pulled back enough to glare at him. 

“Why’d you come?” She answered his challenge with one of her own.

“Because you asked me to. Because you were hurting.”

Kira buried her face back into his chest, her anger about being probed to discuss a relationship she didn’t want to think about too deeply evaporating as quickly as it had arisen. Anyone else she would have told to go straight to hell but she couldn’t, wouldn’t, lie to Odo. Not again. And neither, it appeared, would he let her lie to herself.

“He wouldn’t have understood. Not really. He would have tried but…” Kira struggled to gather her thoughts. “I’ve known Edon since I was twelve. Beneath that friendly sociable attitude he adopts is a pagh as dark and twisted as mine. Our First Minister still lives his personal life like so many of us did back in the day. He doesn’t let himself care too deeply, doesn’t get emotionally invested. He’s familiar. Safe. It was what I needed after Barial died.” 

He felt her take a deep breath. “Shakaar will never break my heart like Antos did. Like you could. Odo, do you ever wonder if you and I...” 

“All the time, Nerys. All the time.” The admission was ripped out of him before he fully realized it. He froze. Kira whipped her head up and gave him a strange searching look he couldn’t make sense of, though surprisingly she didn’t let go of him. 

So. It finally comes out. She finally knows. Maybe not the full extent of my feelings, but enough for her to guess. 

Embarrassed, Odo quickly broke their embrace. “I should be going,” he managed to stammer, making a hasty retreat towards the door. “I’ll be needed in security shortly. Have a good day Major.”

Kira stared at the door for a long time after he left, a hairbreadth away from bursting into tears yet again. This time when the tears came they flowed freely, full of regret and lost opportunity. 

*

Odo stood by the airlock watching the departing freighter until long after it disappeared from view. The discovery of Arissa’s true identity had been a shock to everyone. From that point on, he knew, it was only been a matter of time before she left. Arissa had a life, a husband, elsewhere even if she refused to believe it initially. Odo never thought whatever it was they had would last, but nonetheless he was surprised at how much it hurt knowing she was gone for good. 

His morose contemplation was interrupted by a hand on his shoulder. He didn’t turn around. He didn’t need to. There was only one person on the station who would have dared such a familiarity and he recognized her touch immediately. 

Kira stood behind him, quiet for a moment. “It’s an awful feeling isn’t it? I’m sorry, Odo. You deserve to know happiness.”

He nodded, but said nothing.

Kira went on, undeterred by his lack of responsiveness. “I broke up with Shakaar,” she said bluntly. “Listen, Odo, if you ever decide to give humanoid mating rituals another go…” She gave him a wry grin. “What I’m trying to say here is if you ever want to ask me out sometime don’t hesitate. Just don’t wait forever this time, okay?” She leaned in, placing a soft, sensual, kiss on his cheek before flouncing off, leaving a stunned changeling standing there wondering what the hell had just happened. 

Slowly a large grin began to spread across Odo’s face. It was still there a week later when, according to Quark, the station’s Security Chief requested a particular romantic program and then showed up escorting none other than the First Officer for an evening in the holosuites.


End file.
